To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here
Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue “prepositional truth” by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.
We know them at a glance.
People the world over – regardless of language or literacy – can identify at least a dozen of history’s most successful brands just by looking at their symbols. Think of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Apple, Microsoft, and Google.
Then there are the symbols that represent ideas and ideologies.
You don’t have to speak English or Mandarin or Arabic or Spanish to recognize the dollar sign. The Red Cross. The Olympic rings. The swastika. The hammer & sickle. The American flag.
Religions have visual representations, too, even though none of them have ever been made “official.” Buddhism is associated with an opening lotus flower, Islam a star and crescent moon, and Judaism a six-sided star comprised of a pair of intersecting equilateral triangles.
Christianity is a no-brainer, right? It’s the cross.
But as British theologian John R.W. Stott details in his book The Cross of Christ, centuries went by before members of the Jesus Movement began to associate themselves with the brutal execution apparatus on which their founder met his end.
The earliest Christian symbol, believe it or not, appears to have been a peacock. Representations of that colorful bird were found on the walls of the catacombs in Rome, the underground tunnel system where believers buried their dead. During the Empire, Christians made use of the ichthus or “fish symbol” that we highlighted in the reflection of July 31.
Followers of Jesus likewise celebrated their faith with wall paintings of biblical episodes like Noah’s Ark, Daniel and the lion’s den, Jonah and the big fish, and the raising of Lazarus from the dead.
In the end, however, a universal symbol of Christianity simply had to represent something from the life of Jesus. Stott suggests there were at least seven good candidates.
Christians could have chosen a crib or manger as a way of saying, “God came into the world as a human being.” They could have opted for a carpenter’s bench, pointing out that Jesus spent most of his adult life as a blue collar worker. A fishing boat would have been a means of representing his teaching ministry in Galilee.
Christians could have identified themselves with a basin and towel, remembering Jesus’ humble washing of his disciples’ feet. The stone that rolled away from the tomb on the first Easter morning was another possibility. Jesus-followers could have depicted a throne like the one the Savior occupies in the vivid imagery of the book of Revelation. And of course there was always the dove, representing the Holy Spirit that descended on him at the moment of his baptism.
Instead, they chose the cross.
That symbol of his brutal death proved to be more pivotal to the world’s understanding of Jesus than any reminder of his birth, his ministry, or even his resurrection.
Did it take hundreds of years for Christians to realize that? Actually, the apostle Paul, writing to the Christians in Galatia a mere 20 years after the crucifixion, had already come to that conclusion.
As Paul saw it, the cross was not just one thing that happened to Jesus. It was THE thing that happened to Jesus – especially because what happened to Jesus that day on Golgotha forever changed our relationship with God.
From the beginning, choosing to spotlight the cross seemed like a public relations disaster.
Crucifixion was a dishonorable way to die. The Romans reserved it exclusively for slaves and traitors. For Jews, crucifixion implied endless shame. If you were hung up on a cross, it meant you were a loser in the game called Who Wants to Be the Messiah? Jesus was automatically disqualified.
But Paul persisted.
At the time he wrote Galatians he was in a theological wrestling match with some teachers who insisted that his readers (who were Gentiles) first had to become Jews in order to know God. These teachers boasted about winning converts to their way of seeing things.
Towards the end of his letter, Paul simply explodes: “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which (DIA) the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).
The preposition DIA is simple. And humble. It can mean “through” in a physical sense, such as traveling through the woods. It can mean “through” in an emotional sense, such as going through a stormy chapter of life.
It can also mean “by means of,” which seems to be Paul’s sense in this verse. Somehow, in a way we cannot fully grasp, what cost Jesus his life is what gives life to us.
Something horrible happened that Friday. But something wonderful was made possible for each of us. If I “believe into” Jesus as the one who loves me and gave his life for me, my old life is nailed to Jesus’ cross. My track record of sin is dead and buried. I now have the capacity (through God’s indwelling Spirit) to live a new kind of life.
Paul understood that this was just crazy talk for many people.
“Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles” (I Corinthians 1:22-23). Paul did not emphasize Christ in the manger. Or Christ baptized. Or Christ the carpenter. Or Christ teaching on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Or even Christ alive again on Easter, although that was unquestionably a key foundation block of his theology.
“We preach Christ crucified.” It is through (DIA) Jesus’ death, and his death alone, that we have life.
This truth has transformed many of history’s greatest songwriters.
One of them was Isaac Watts, known as the “boy genius” of hymn-writing in the 18th century. Today we might call him a snarky teenager.
Watts was about 18 years old when he complained to his father about the boring music of the Anglican Church. His dad called his bluff: “You think you can do better?” Within hours Watts had composed a hymn that so impressed his local church that they asked if he would be willing to write another one.
That he did.
Watts composed a brand new hymn for 222 consecutive Sundays (that’s a span of more than four years) despite a crippling stroke that left him able to speak but unable to write apart from the help of a secretary.
Watts’ hymns – which were dismissed at the time by some people as outrageous “contemporary music” – are still being sung around the world three centuries later. Besides more than 600 songs, Watts published 52 major works, including a book on logic still valued in universities, along with volumes on grammar, philosophy, astronomy, and geography.
Surprisingly, Watts wrote not only one of the most famous Christmas carols (Joy to theWorld!) but one of the hymns most associated with Good Friday.
It’s called When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. Notice that the second verse was clearly inspired by Galatians 6:14:
When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of Glory died
My richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, save in the death of Christ my God:
All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood.
See from his head, his hands, his feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down!
Did e’er such love and sorrow meet? Or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of Nature mine, that were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.
May Christ’s love – so amazing, so divine – carry you through whatever you are facing this week.